Tag Archives: billboards

There’s a lot of things you hear when you bring up Philadelphia but this one is good. They have a tourism campaign of “Love Letters” with billboards throughout the city, as well as a print and commercial campaigns and I think they’re pretty good!

This is a perfect example of how they use “Love.”

These ads span from museum exhibits to baseball/hockey fans to restaurants. The TV commercials show how they’re personifying Philadelphia and making it a real love letter from Philly. The great thing about this campaign is that they’re using what people are already familiar with: the Philadelphia motto “the City of Brotherly Love” and our famous LOVE sculpture that brings tourists to snap a photo.

They are very smart about incorporating sports because it gets people talking. Like the one to the “World Champions” after Philadelphia won the World Series in baseball, it is actually simultaneously saying congrats to the Phillies while building a stronger loyalty to those fans. Smart! They’re also using on stairs at the train station as well as flags hanging from the street lights.

Lesson Learned: Use what you have but look at it slightly different and use it in a way that will surprise your customers. Example: you have a small business in a small town, play that characteristic up! Tell your customers to shop with you, or use your service because they’ll get special attention that the “big boys” can’t give. You’re their “neighbor”, building trust on something you already have is a great way to improve business and Taglines as well as a campaign like Philadelphia did can help! Don’t forget to use it in all of your branding.

This week’s Dumbest Marketing Move goes to……I don’t know! We don’t know what company this is on the billboard. (pictured below).Maybe they thought it was a clever billboard, but they are really missing the boat and it was an expensive trip. PLEASE LET US KNOW WHO THIS IS IF YOU KNOW. We will send them a dumb marketing move certificate in honor of this award!

Four major flaws in this billboard are that there was no logo included, no contact info or website, too much copy and it required too much thinking. Billboards are one of the hardest forms of advertisement out there and this billboard brings that point home. Billboards require the most creative thinking in copy writing. You must be succinct, saying what you need to say in a few words. You have less than 3 seconds to get your point across to your audience, even if they’re only driving 35 mph.

Lesson Learned: Keep your copy short, dummy proof it, make it obvious what it is for, and use a visual! Visuals on billboards speak louder than words, unless your words are clear and concise. Here’s an example of a good billboard, which was picked because off the top of my head I didn’t know this logo but the message still came cross loud and clear